


Keep it til you Fold

by JaqofSpades



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Blackout (Revolution), F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-10-27 21:38:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10817259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: Charlie Matheson claws her way out of a cloud of grief to discover her Grandpa Gene had died without leaving a will.  And he wasn’t her last living relative after all: an uncle she never knew existed has inherited half of The Republic, the ranch that has been her world since before she learned to ride a horse.   She couldn’t care less if Miles and his friends drink and smoke themselves to death down in the River Cottage – but there’s a herd of mustangs up in the hills that could turn the Republic back into a going concern, and she can't bring them down alone. If they want to live on her spread, they can damn well sober up, put down their guitars and get their asses on horseback.  (So maybe she likes telling them what to do more than she’ll admit.  It’s hardly the only secret she’s keeping when it comes to Miles, his best friend and the gorgeous woman she’s pretty sure is sleeping with them both.)





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hayj](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hayj/gifts).



> A months late birthday present for Auntie Hay. Sorry love - I hadn't forgotton you, just needed a bit of a break for this one to settle in properly. Title is from [the Living Things song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMh4_GIZc9o), a lush, decadent paean to survival and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps that has been swirling around in my head for over a decade now. And as always my thanks to Romeokijai who outdid herself to make some gorgeous coverart for Hay.

 

 

Charlie lasts an hour before she lets herself retreat.  She smiles vacantly, adds the odd hum of agreement, nods her head every now and then.  But she’s already high in the hills, the smell of juniper and horse sharp in her nostrils, Tamar’s haunches bunching underneath her as they climb.  She twists in the saddle to drink in the view, tracing the path of Cedar Creek past the stands of oaks that were her fortresses as a child, past the hollows that fill with wildflowers.  Past the neat white square of the cottage to arrive at the long, low sprawl of the main house, always too big for just the two of them, but still home.  Somehow, she can see Grandpa saddling up in the yard, ready to haul himself up onto Big Jack to ride the fences one more time.  

She smiles, his drawl ringing in her ears.  “Every day, Charlie bear.  You gotta check ‘em.  Never know who you'll find tangled up, or where the cattle might be vanishing to.  Never forget that.”

 _I won’t, Granpa,_ she promises _.  I won’t forget,_ and the pain explodes in her chest like a bomb, dumping her back into the stuffy little room, the gaggle of lawyers, the drone of strangers busy deciding whether she can go home tonight and get on with living her life.

 “… intestate therefore the property shall revert to the state of Texas in the absence of any natural heirs being identified.  In the matter of Eugene Hugh Porter, predeceased by both his wife Charlotte Porter and daughter, Rachel Porter Matheson, two heirs can be identified and the property and all chattels are hereby apportioned…”

Wait.  Two heirs?  How could her grandfather possibly have two heirs?  Everyone else was dead!

Apportioned?  That meant split, right? Like – divided?

No.

No one was dividing anything on The Republic.  Grandpa wouldn’t so much as sell a quarter-acre.  Sub-divisions were the devil, and they’d touch his ranch over his dead body --

“in exactly equal proportions between Charlotte Jean Matheson, of The Republic, Cedar Creek Road, Edwards County, and Miles Everard Matheson, of USMC Parris Island, South Carolina.”

Matheson?  There was another Matheson – did she have a cousin she’d never heard of?  But why on earth would a Matheson be entitled to the Porter family ranch?  She was only a Matheson because Dad had married Mom, and they hadn’t even lived long enough to get settled there.  Why should ---

Whoever he is, Miles Matheson isn’t in the room for the decision.  Mr Neville tries to explain, something about Dad being Mom’s next of kin and that making his brother …

A brother?  Dad had a brother?

“Can I go home?” Charlie interrupts, her mind too overstretched to think about it.  “I just want to go home.”

Mr Neville draws his lips together in a grimace she knows is meant to be a smile.  He's her lawyer now, she expects, after years of looking after her grandfather's affairs.  She remembers playing with his son Jason under the table while Grandpa and Mr Neville - Tom, he would rumble, Tom - would talk business, and his smile had been kind, then.

It's sad, now, and a little frustrated.  They want her to be an adult about this, but - they don't even realize that she's talking about the ranch. She’s been away at school for two years, after all, and her postal address is still Berkeley.   She’d wanted to go to State, but Grandpa had insisted she take her best offer.  Coming home would feel so much better if she made the best of being away, he’d promised.

Home.

She’s going home, she’s going to sleep, and tomorrow, she’ll figure out what to do about the ranch, and school, and … an uncle.  The uncle she never knew she had, who now owns half of her lifeblood. 

Mr Neville's junior partner - Adam something, she doesn't catch the rest - offers to drive her, then hands over the keys to her Gramps' truck with a smile when she refuses. 

"And here are the keys to the house," he offers solemnly and Charlie resists the urge to tell him she doubts the place is even locked up.  Grandpa has to be reminded to shut the back door, even though he'd never leave a gate open.  

But her Grandpa is dead, and the house has been empty for nearly a month, and the hands have all drifted away.  He and Jason had done what they could, Mr Neville tells her, and The Warclan had sent a hand over every day or so to check on the stock, but  - they had the paperwork for an on-ranch sale all ready to go, just say the word.  Unless she planned to sell The Republic as a going concern, but if she wanted to do that they'd need to move quickly, he'd frowned.

Fuck off, Charlie thinks as she responds with a sad smile.  "I'll be in touch once I've figured it all out.  Right now - I need some time."

Time, the smell of the hills, and a horse underneath her, her soul cries, and she doesn't register another thought until she's checked out of her hotel, duffel bag slung in the back of grandpa's truck, high heels kicked off to drive barefoot in the dark suit she's picked out for the funeral.   Somewhere past San Antonio, she finds herself flinging the stupid shoes out the window, then the severely cut jacket.  She'd take the skirt off too, if she was willing to slow down long enough to manage it.

It’s not just the grief, she tells herself.  They weren’t comfortable. 

Jeans and boots, from now on.  Flannel. 

She had a ranch to run.  And if there was someone out there trying to steal it out from under her, long lost uncle or not, well.  He had another think coming, because she was the only person left alive who knew how to run the place, and besides.  She’ll never leave The Republic again.


	2. You're doing alright now

Charlie collapses facedown onto the tangled mess of her bed, body still damp from the shower.  Normally she’d at least try to dry off, but after three days in the saddle, she couldn’t lift her arms if she tried.  The fan at the end of her bed is stroking her with a thousand cool fingers, caressing every single part of her that needs soothing, and she is perfectly, deliciously comfortable. 

And trying not think about the fact that Nora just went ahead and paid the overdue electricity bill.  Outrageous, really, even if the energy company had turned the damn power off.  And she’s not feeling grateful _at all_.

 “Liar,” she groans aloud, as the fan raises delicious goosebumps all over her damp skin. Damn interlopers.  She shouldn’t have let them pay a single penny, let alone sit at their table and drink their coffee when she got back this afternoon.  She been curious, that’s all.  Wanted to see what they had done with Maggie’s place.   

Charlie can just imagine what her no-nonsense friend would have had to say about the drumkit and collection of guitars now occupying her precious sunroom.  What, she wonders, would she have thought about the people who played them?

The people trying to steal your ranch, she reminds herself as she shivers at the memory of Nora’s gorgeous sloe eyes and understanding smile.  The way Bass Monroe had pulled out a chair for her, insisting she sit before she fell over.  She hadn’t been able to think in the face of that intensely blue gaze, and he’d known it too, the sexy bastard.  He’d been leaning over her, pouring a hearty shot of whiskey directly into her cup when her long-lost uncle walked in.

“What the hell are you doing, Bass? Corrupting her already?”

Mmm, if only, Charlie had wished, too tired to catch herself.  Usually, she managed to squelch the inappropriate thoughts with the force of her anger and resentment, but not today.  She’d been awed by the play of light on Nora’s incredible cheekbones, the muscled curve of Monroe’s ass in his tight jeans.  And Miles.  At least she’d been sensible enough to avoid looking at Miles, even as he asked what she’d been doing, and her plans for the cattle.

Their cattle, she’d reminded him, and he’d flushed a dull red, and looked away. 

 _Goddamn_ interlopers.

The savage spike of anger gives Charlie the energy to flip over onto her back, wriggling a little to stretch out her sore back, already praying for sleep to descend.  Her bedroll hadn’t been as comfortable as she remembered, or maybe it was just the fact of being alone up there – she had woken every hour or two, then shuffled through her days like a zombie.  Yet she can’t sleep, her mind somehow as restless as the cattle in the yards outside.

So count ‘em, she smiles wistfully.  When she was little, they’d do it together until she fell asleep, Granpa’s steady drawl more soothing than the act of counting itself.   She can still hear him as she counts: one, two, three, four … the poddies in the home paddock, the breeding herd.  All the cattle on the hill, all the cattle in the yard.  They were a good deal older than they should be, and leaner than she’d like, but if she leaves at dawn, she just might just make the first sale of the day in San Antonio. _Best price of the day, Charlie girl._   

“First sale it is, Granpa,” she murmurs.  She’d counted 82 steers, and they were a scrawny bunch, most would go under 400 pounds, but even at $150 per head … it’d pay the bills.  Hell, if the price got to $200, she might even be able to make a dint in the mortgage.

First, the feed bill, she decided.  Then the vet, and the overdraft.  She’d love to be able to make a payment on the cattle truck, and her car, but they’d probably have to wait.  Nora had said not to bother about paying her back, but she has to scrape it up somewhere.  She can’t feel beholden to them, not when it’s all so … confusing.

Damn her for being so nice anyway.  And pretty.  So, so pretty, Charlie sighs, failing miserably at her attempt to ignore the fact.  Nora had propped her perfect chin on one long-fingered hand, and her eyes had been so kind, her smiles so sympathetic - Charlie had just spilled.   

The whole story had come out:  she had no money.  Her grandfather’s accounts were near empty.  This place had been her only inheritance, and to get a job she’d have to drive further than she could afford the gas.  This was it – lost and wandering stock, half a dozen scrawny horses, five and half thousand acres, half of it on the plain and the other half extending up onto the rough country of the plateau. 

“I can see why you don’t want to leave, though,” Nora had murmured, and fuck that faraway look in her eyes.  It makes it harder, watching them falling in love with the place. The last thing Charlie needs is for these people to want to be here.  Every day, they seem less like interlopers and more … nope.  She had a family.  They died.

She’d bolted, after that.  Forced out a thank you without specifying whether it was for her scandalous liberties with the electricity bill, or the ridiculously good coffee she’d drunk three cups of.  Hadn’t even looked back as she hightailed it out of the too-familiar kitchen, headed down to the yards for a last check on the cattle, then back to the big house to kick off her boots before luxuriating in a long, hot shower.  Then she’d thrown herself on this wide, empty bed, and surrendered to sleep.

Which refused to come.

Fuck.  Fuckity fuckity fucksticks, Charlie curses herself silently, not quite willing to profane her childhood bedroom with the sort of words that had been tarred out of her at a young age.  But she needs to let it go, to release the pressure, to go the fuck to sleep, because …

She didn’t want to think about how they’d seemed interested in the running of the ranch, and had offered their help.  Definitely wasn’t speculating on whether this was some sort of extended vacation, or whether they planned to stay.  Not to remember the way her heart had pitter-pattered every time Nora smiled, then rioted at Monroe’s proximity, only to fall into her shoes when her uncle walked in. They’d turned to him like flowers to the sun, and what had he done to earn that sort of regard?  Scowl magnificently?  Growl at them?  Shown outstanding dedication to the goal of drinking himself to death? 

Miles Matheson had gotten on her last nerve right from the moment they’d first met.  Before then, in fact, because he was the asshole who was trying to steal her Granpa’s ranch, but in the flesh? Good old Uncle Miles in the flesh had proved to be more infuriating than she could have ever imagined.

That first trip back from Austin, the day she learned of his existence, she had half expected him to be staked out on the porch even before she got home.  A comicbook villain, circling like a vulture ready to pick over the bones of The Republic.  He hadn’t been, of course, and nor had he turned up on the day after that, or the day after that. 

Clearly Miles Matheson, USMC, had important business elsewhere, so she’d grabbed the opportunity to get her ducks in a row before he showed his weaselly, ranch-stealing face.   She fed cattle and mended fences and broke in horses all the while wondering if he’d want to sell the place, or if he’d try to strip the assets first.  Spun wild scenarios around all the ways he could make the place into everything her Grandpa would hate.  Even believed herself sometimes.  But as weeks slipped into months without even a phone call, she’d begun to wonder which were the imaginary scenarios, and what had actually happened that day in Austin.  Maybe she’d dreamed up this uber-enemy to divert attention from the huge hole in her life. Maybe she was acting out, inventing an Uncle for a final chance at family. In the end, she decided it didn’t matter one way or another.  Real or not, he clearly wasn’t coming.

Then eleven weeks and four days after her grandfather died, a low-slung black car prowled down their private road just before dusk, announcing its presence with a throaty rumble and a thick cloud of dust. 

Charlie had been sinking posts all day, and was so sweaty and out-of-sorts she’d practically collapsed underneath the old handpump in the yard.  She had stripped down to glory in the cool relief as she shoved her head under the pump and let it stream down her body, not realising she was about to have company. 

He’d hauled his noisy beast to a stop just yards away, lowered the driver’s side window and pulled down his stupid sunglasses to bark at her.

“Charlie Matheson?”

She knew it was him right away.  She’d seen a photo of her Matheson grandfather once, and the resemblance was uncanny.  Nothing like her Dad at all, she notes idly, and it’s weird, but he reminded her of someone else too, but she just couldn’t pick who.

(Herself, she would realise later that night, staring into the mirror.  There was something about the long bones in her face, the strong chin.  She’d been cursing her features for years, hating herself for failing to inherit her mother’s delicate blonde beauty, but it takes Miles Matheson to show her the truth.  She’s not a lacklustre copy of the Porter women after all.   Hers is a Matheson face.)

Maybe it was the dissonance that made her mean.  Contrary, at least, something deep inside refusing to let it be too easy for him. Or at least, that’s what she tells herself is going on when she scoops her wet hair out of her face and cocks one hip as he takes in her bare, sunkissed  shoulders, the drenched tank that’s clinging to her every curve, the ancient, threadbare jeans that have to serve as her work pants in lieu of anything else crappy enough.

He’d unfolded himself from that ridiculous car, straightening to his full height, so tall that he blocked out the rapidly sinking sun.  She can’t remember when she stopped breathing, just that she had, transfixed by the way he stared down into her face, then let his eyes drop lower to inspect the long planes of her body, before working his way up again. 

His eyes had lingered on the shameless thrust of her braless breasts, so lovingly outlined by her wet shirt, and when he’d licked his lips, it had sent her spiralling into panic. 

“I’m looking for Charlotte Matheson,” he’d growled, and something in his voice ordered her not to be that woman. 

He’s my uncle.  My _uncle_ , she’d pleaded with herself, but too late. The sensual response had already electrified her body, hard nipples begging for his attention as her sex released into a warm, wet flood.

Charlie knew there was only one defence left to her: attack.  She picked up the overshirt she’d discarded earlier and shrugged it back on, then hefted the bedroll and saddlebag sitting nearby.  I’m leaving, her contempt shouted, but the lawyers had been clear about her obligations so him.  “Yeah, you found her,” she mumbles, looking everywhere but in that strangely familiar face.

He’d processed that with a slow blink, then offered her his hand.  “Miles.  Miles Matheson,” he said slowly, then backed away with a wry nod when she stared at him expectantly, waiting for him to notice her full hands.  “Can I help you with that”

“Nup.  I got it.  I can stand on my own two feet,” she had snarled, and yes, in retrospect it had been over the top.  Hostile, even.  

He’d cocked his head, incredulous, then his jaw had firmed as he bit down to deliver something cutting.  But a peal of amusement from the backseat of the low-slung car had stopped him, riveting them both.

“Oh, I like her, Miles.   She’s got it going on,” cooed the woman shimmying her way out of the backseat. 

Charlie couldn’t help but stare – for all her faded t-shirt and combat pants, she had to be a goddamn supermodel.  Dark, glowing skin over most elegant bones Charlie had ever seen;  hair a midnight tumble on the top of her head; wide, generous mouth a study in sensual amusement.  The most magnificent eyes, Charlie remembers thinking, long and tilted and shining with a razor-sharp awareness of exactly what was going on here.

How? Charlie had reeled, and then fast on the heels of puzzlement, Wow. 

Nora had brought Miles to heel with a single raise of her perfectly-arched eyebrows, snapping out the command as carelessly as cracking a whip. “Introduce me.”

He’d glared back, defying her for a moment, then conceded. “Nora Clayton – Charlotte Matheson.  The lawyers tell me she’s my niece.”

He sounded – almost in shock.  As if he was struggling to believe it, just like she was.  Empathy kicked her in the shins, hard, and she was so busy fighting it, Charlie nearly missed the other man getting out of the car.  Impossible, she’ll think later.  How do you overlook someone who looks like Bass Monroe?  

Probably because she was so pissed at Miles, and dazzled by Nora, Charlie has to admit.  Then there was the name thing.

 “Nice to meet you, Charlotte,” a silken voice had crooned, and – oh.  Oh no.  Unfair.

Her mouth flapped a little before she could summon the appropriate reproof.  “Charlie,” she’d corrected through gritted teeth.  “People call me Charlie.”

“But Charlotte is such a pretty name.  And doesn’t it just suit you,” he’d grinned and … bam. That slow, blinding smile incinerated her brain like a thunderbolt.  Sadly for him, harping on about her grandmother’s name wasn’t the way to charm her.

“Call me what you like … except Charlotte,” she’d snapped.  “It’s Charlie, and you are?”

“Bass Monroe.  Feel free to call me Uncle Bass, if you like,”

“Bass!” 

“Tell me you didn’t think it, Miles.”

Charlie ignores the distinctly sexual undercurrent to their banter to consider the blond god’s very valid point. “What am I supposed to call you?  Uncle Miles?”

He’d snorted, two parts amusement to one part derision.  “Hell no.  You’re a grown woman and I don’t know you from Adam.  Call me shit for brains if you like, but not that.”

“Okay then.  Shit-for-brains it is,” she said, not liking the fact this was clearly as difficult for him as it was for her.  Apparently acquiring a brand new relative you never knew existed was equally surreal from either end of the street. She'd like to be able to throw off his name carelessly like she does Monroe, but it took her three tries to wrap her mouth around 'Miles'. Should have stuck with shit-for-brains, she thinks more than once.

Her uncle’s watchful friend smirked through their awkward exchange then broke the tension effortlessly:  “And call me Nora, please.  We were so excited to finally get to meet you, Charlie.  Miles would have been here sooner but our unit’s been kept busy with a reconstruction op in Kandahar province.”

“Marine Corps, right?”

They all nod their heads with the exact same timing.  Only Monroe, clearly the joker of the group, adds the near obligatory “hoo rah”.  Nora and Miles roll their eyes as Charlie chokes on the unexpected snort of laughter.

“Guess you better come up to the house then.  Dinner and all that.”

“What you making?”

“Hopefully something that won’t poison you,” she tells Monroe, only half joking.  “Barbecue?  I have steaks.  And hopefully enough in the garden for salad.”

“You had me at steak,” Miles grunts, and nods at the armful she’s still carrying.  “Sure I can’t help you with that?”

She gives him the saddlebags, in the end, and Monroe hefts her bedroll.  “Just leave ‘em on the porch, I’ll put ‘em back in the tackroom tomorrow,” Charlie offers, and that started them on the topic of horses, and whether or not they could ride.

“Done a bit, as kids.  Rural Indiana.  But nothing like this,” Miles had said, gazing out towards the barn, and the two yearlings playing in the pen out front.  “You raise horses?”

“Some.  Granpa was more about the cattle, but he’d humor me with a pretty pony every few years.  And since they were mares – I always told him we should have a stud,” Charlie explained.  “He said there was no money in it.  And to be fair, he was probably right.”

But if they brought down the mustangs … they were the key, she told them. The mustangs running free up on the Plateau had some of the best blood in the county, and no one had access like The Republic did.  God knows they’d been losing their saddle horses to the wild stallions for enough years, so they might as well recoup the loss.  Domestic mares serviced by wild stallions made for less inbred bloodstock, after all.   Everyone said it was harebrained, but … she still wanted to try, one day.

“You’ll do it.  I can tell already you got Matheson stubborn stamped all over you,” Nora smirked, making Bass yodel with laughter.  Miles had just frowned, and saluted them with the whiskey she’d found in Granpa’s drinks cupboard.

“Need a lot of hands for that sort of thing.  And we just don’t have it, not since my Granpa died.  And the next ranch over wants to shoot them all out,” she’d explained gloomily.

“What about you?  When do you go back to your unit?”  Because the company had been surprisingly fun, but they were Marines, as they kept telling her.  They had a job to do, even if Miles suddenly owned a half share in a ranch.  Silent partner, he assured her.  They’d could be yanked back to base any old time, so he didn’t have room for anything else.

“No clue. But right now, we’re on indefinite leave.  Got too much saved up, some pencil dick back at base said.  So we thought we’d come check it out.”

Don’t sound so excited, she remembers thinking.  I’m not a fucking burden.

Monroe, at least, had seemed enthusiastic.  “We could learn to ride horseback, right?  See some of the place? Maybe even help you out on the farm?”

“Ranch,” she’d snapped, and they’d looked at each other, Bass and Nora, and laughed.  “So Matheson,” she heard them say as she walked away, and something more indistinct about the shape of her ass. 

That had been nearly two months ago, now.  They'd arrived, she'd offered them dinner, and they'd never really left since.  Which is – they’re interlopers, she tells herself.  She doesn’t want them get too comfortable here.  Because even if she did want them to stay, they’d never fit in.

When she heard her long-lost uncle was a soldier – sorry, _Marine_ – she expected someone like pretty much everyone else around here.  Just with a different type of hat.  Well, joke was on her, because Miles took to a Stetson like he was born to it, and learned to sit a horse quickly enough.  Nora had bought him a pair of hand-tooled boots for his birthday, and he’d worn them in good.  But no matter how long they stayed (no matter how much she wanted them to stay, something whispered), they’d still be different.  Unreconstructed cowpokes they were not. 

Nora was a city slicker, if way more adaptable than most, and Miles and Bass were small-town kids.  But that wasn’t the problem.  They’d lived a life much bigger than this – bigger than Texas, she suspects – and they’d lived it on their own terms.  Had no time for small town morality, Miles said often enough.  They weren’t interested in fitting in, not if meant having to change who they were.  And it wasn’t the military thing, either. 

She’d been sipping her first-ever glass of whiskey when she asked them to stay.  They’d been talking risk and reward, and how you’d never do anything new if you wouldn’t try stuff. 

Bass and Nora had teased her unmercifully when she’d admitted she had never snuck even a mouthful of Granpa’s whiskey, but Miles had just shrugged and mumbled something about the good stuff, his mobile tongue chasing down a few stray amber drops on his top lip.  “Could be worth the risk, for sure.”

Alcohol-induced madness, perhaps, telling them they had plenty of space if they wanted to stay.  The house was empty, after all.  No one in the River Cottage, either, not since Maggie left.  Only a couple of bedrooms down there, though.

Nora had flushed a little, and Bass had tried to hide his smile.  Miles just took a swig of whiskey, his gaze locked with her own as he laid out their truth.

“Won’t need more than one room,” he’d rasped.  “Don’t use more than one bed.”

“But where –” Charlie swallows the remainder of the question.  She’s never thought of herself as naïve, but she feels it now.  She’d spent the evening watching Bass and Miles interact, and dismissed all the little touches as manly buddies stuff.  But Miles was telling her they were more than that.  Nora’s blush, Bass proud as punch – they’re telling her Miles and Bass and Nora were more than that.

"River Cottage it is, then," she'd offered. "It's nice and private." Which, UGH. But no one else had flinched the way she did when the words came out, and later, it occurs to her that they're not embarrassed or ashamed of their relationship. It just is, and she can't help but feel a sneaking admiration for that sort of shamelessness.

And she’s seen the proof of it in a million ways since, the way their shoulders bump as they walk, the fact they’ll pile on top of each other on the sofa rather than choose separate chairs.   The late night skinny dipping in the pool out back, and that time she caught Miles and Nora pulling their clothes back on in a field, once.  Following the music that drifts in through her window down to the River Cottage, only to glance in the window before she knocked.

Miles still had his guitar slung across his chest as Nora kneeled in front of him on all fours.  Her eyes were closed, her long neck extended in a gorgeous arch to facilitate the union of her mouth with his cock.  His hands were fisting in her hair and his face tight with restraint as he slowly worked his glistening cock in and out of her mouth.   Behind her, Bass was kneading the glorious globes of Nora’s ass as he thrust into her, fucking her in perfect sync with the careful rhythm Miles had set.

Charlie couldn’t move from her place on the doorstep, her senses overloaded by the sight of the three of them together.   Nora was moaning, and begging to be allowed to come, and they were teasing her, Charlie realised, withholding it.  And then the dam broke, seemingly with no extra stimulation at all, a simple, handsfree fucking sending Nora plummeting over the edge just as Miles began to come, yanking his cock out of her mouth to squirt all over the landscape of her round, berry-tipped breasts.

He'd pulled her upright and spun her around for Bass to admire, then ordered with a smirk: “clean her up.”

How strange that the sight of Bass Monroe’s tongue gliding over one taut, brown nipple had been the thing to pull Charlie from her stupor.  She had slunk back to the big house to fall into her own bed, pussy pulsing with the power of their secret.

That had been the first night she had dreamed, but not the last.  She pushed the thoughts away during the daylight hours, but at night, they hunted her down, claimed her.  Mostly, she dreams about Nora and Bass and Miles.

Tonight, she’s thinking about something else when her exhausted body finally succumbs to sleep, lips already parted on shocked moan.  “I can’t,” she mumbles, head burrowing into the pillow.

“Please,” she mutters, then smiles.  She’s back in Nora’s kitchen, at Nora’s table, but it’s only a dream.  She doesn’t have to fight it, in dreams.

Only a dream, as her fingers ghost down her body, finding her warmest spot and playing, insistent.  She wants to show Nora exactly how grateful she can be, slipping underneath the worn pine table to slide her hands up Nora’s taut thighs, underneath her skirt, all the way to her bare pussy.

(She’d be shocked, but this is a dream, and even her waking self wouldn’t be surprised if Nora  occasionally decided to forego her knickers.)

Nora is moaning, and spreading her legs, and Charlie is lost in the tang of her, in the way she shudders and shakes at the slightest puff of breath.  She’s giggling, so mesmerised she fails to notice the two pairs of jeanclad legs appearing either side of Nora’s chair, the twin pairs of military issue boots.  Two rapt faces, and two, equally intense stares, one brown, one blue.  Both hungry, she discovers when she finally lifts her head, licking her lips in satisfaction.

“Uncle Miles,” she squawks, and tries to jump to her feet, but his hand is on her shoulder.

“What do you think, Bass?  Should we punish her?  For touching our girl?”

“You gotta put her over your knee, Miles.  Bad niece, and all that.”

“Wouldn’t want to hurt my brother’s little girl.  We’re family after all. And she’s such a sweet child.”

Charlie can feel her protests welling up, bitter enough to cut through the sharpness of her arousal.  “I –“

He cuts her off, the bastard. 

“Ssh, ssh, baby girl.  Not going to touch you.”  But those black eyes stare down into her own with an entire universe of wickedness shining from them.  And then his hand moves to the top button of his jeans. He flicks it open, oh so deliberately, and then the next, never once dropping her gaze. Charlie struggles though, can't keep from looking, because he doesn’t believe in underwear either and every sense she has is fixated on his huge purple-veined cock.

She fights it, her unconscious self, hating what it does to her, even just the thought of him. How her mouth is watering, how she’d do anything for a taste. What sort of pervert wants to suck her uncle’s cock, she pleads, but Charlie-in-the-dream isn’t having any of that.  She’s on her knees, begging prettily.

Charlie moans in her sleep, but she's lost the battle. Her fingers move faster, plunge deeper, and her hips start to buck. She doesn’t come, though, until dream Miles gives her a curt nod of his head and feeds her his cock.

“Thank you, Uncle Miles,” she gasps around his girth, then glances over to where Monroe is fucking Nora’s face.  "Thank you, Mr Monroe.”

“That’s General Monroe to you, kid,” he growls, and she has no clue what he is on about, but comes anyway; comes and comes and comes and comes until the onslaught of pleasure jerks her awake.

She blinks into the dark, mind still whirling with a barrage of images that makes her blush. And throb, her still liquid sex clamoring for something more tangible than the fevered imaginings of her lonely brain.

That’s all it is, Charlie promises herself.  Loneliness.  The basic hunger for human contact, made complex by the situation.  Magnified, perhaps, by the taboo.

Nothing to do with the music that drifts in her window most nights, calling her.  Or the invitations she’s turned down, night after night.

Charlie pushes herself out of the tangle of sweaty sheets and crosses to the open window, listening.  She doesn’t hear anything at first, but then the wind shifts and the night noises resolve themselves into a pair of guitars and the gentle roll of Nora’s drums underneath.  A song she knows, but can’t quite put her finger on.  Maybe she’s heard them play it before, Charlie thinks sleepily.

It changes then, settling  into something more intense as the drumbeat takes over.  Two male voices, raw and real, chant a repetitive lyric she can’t catch, with Nora’s rich soprano harmonising underneath.  They break, and giggle, then start to slur, and she tries not to smile with them.  Then the chorus rises, takes her by the hand and stabs her in the heart, over and over:  “you’re your own messiah, you’re your own messiah, you’re your own messiah ….”

She knows it true, but saving herself – she doesn’t even know where to start.  Where does she find the energy?  And maybe there’s a part of her that wants to stay lost.  Hell – if she’s honest, there’s a part of her who wants to lose herself completely.

But there’s not one fleeting moment in which she’s prepared to contemplate losing The Republic, so that has to mean something.  That has to be it.

That’s where she starts – tomorrow.  At dawn, she remembers with a wince. 

Time to stop obsessing and go back to bed.


End file.
